The first time I saw Nadim Asfar’s photographs, they stopped me in my tracks. There’s something striking about them, in a bare way — incredibly pared down in essence, it is this rawness which catches your eye. It was 2012, and I was reviewing a group exhibit at Espace Kettaneh Kunigk, the former incarnation of Galerie Tanit-Beyrouth. Among the landscapes and still lives, a series of 42 snapshots, entitled ‘Thinking of Tomorrow, Emotional Landscapes,’ documented a sequence of mundane moments. The view from Asfar’s balcony, looking out over the weather stained buildings of Mar Mikhael, was captured in sunshine, moonlight and in the rain. A plate of half eaten food, a tangle of discarded clothing on a bed, a close up of a door frame folded back on its hinges. Individually, the photos revealed very little, together, they created a deeply intimate portrait of the minutiae of the photographer’s life.
India is a British-Indian freelance writer and journalist. She was based in Beirut for eight years from 2011 to 2019, reporting on Lebanon and the Middle East. In 2019, she spent six months reporting from Latin America and since 2021 she has been based in Istanbul.
